Maintenance Exercise Following Weight Loss -- Do I Have to Keep Working Out So Hard or As Often?

Maintaining Lean Muscle Mass After Losing Weight

You accomplished your goal of losing your unwanted weight. Congratulations! Losing weight isn't easy and if you've dropped 5, 10, or more pounds and kept it off. You should be extremely proud of yourself. I know that I am of you for it.

Now that you've gotten rid your additional weight burden supported by your knees, hips, and shoulders, you probably want to know IF you have to keep exercising at the same intensity level you were when you were dieting or do you have to exercise for the same duration or length of time? According to substantial statistical research, your weight maintenance depends upon you doing just that. 

The National Weight Control Registry is the largest prospective investigation of long-term weight loss maintenance, established in 1994. The NWCR reports on their website (www.nwcr.ws) that they are currently tracking over 10k individuals who have lost considerable amounts of weight and have kept it off for an extended period of time. This continued research study has over twenty-two years worth of diet and exercise questionnaires and annual follow-up surveys collected from both men and women over the age of 18 years who were once overweight but then dieted to obtain a BMI in the normal range (18.5 - 24.9). 

The average National Weight Loss Registry member has lost 33 kg or about 72.6 pounds and has maintained their weight loss success for greater than 5 years. To maintain their weight loss, NWCR registrants describe engaging in high levels of physical activity related as 60 minutes of exercise. If NWCR members are to be believed, 94% of them report increasing their physical activity above what they had previously done before losing their unwanted weight and 90% disclose that they engaged, on average, in about one hour of "exercise" per day. 

I have worked in the healthcare professional in one capacity or another for twenty-five years. Two decades of experience helping over 1,000 people lose weight, eat healthy, get physically fit, and either gain muscle or maintain what muscle they had has provided me with lots of statistical data of my own. I will tell you that the majority of my female and male clients had to continue to workout regularly "almost" as hard and nearly as lengthy in duration as they did while they were in the process of losing weight. In order to stay at their desired size, they needed to maintain about the same amount of lean muscle mass they had added to their bodies while they were dieting and their weight maintenance also required the continued caloric expenditure or calorie burn produced as a result of exercising or physically moving. 

Physical activity or exercise helps with weight loss due to its metabolism boosting effects and its caloric expenditure. Physical activity or exercise that requires an additional weight burden upon the body's musculature causes an increase in muscle size -- you build more muscle. A pound of muscle has more energy requirements THAN a pound of fat, therefore, the more lean muscle mass you possess, the higher your basal metabolic rate typically. The higher your BMR, the more calories you burn throughout the day and night. 

If a certain amount of movement or exercise enabled someone to lose their excess weight, it is scientifically unreasonable to think that about the same measure of physical activity isn't going to be necessary to keep off the lost weight due to that person's requirement of a higher basal metabolic rate to process AND USE UP the food they put in their bodies in the form of breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner as energy as well as to construct the molecular building materials for their cells and tissues.

I hope this post answered the maintenance exercise question. Thank you for reading.

Until next time,
Bell Gia
Nutrition and Fitness Expert

How to Get A Great Butt

What Kind of Butt Are You Looking For?

What do you think of immediately when you hear the names Kim Kardashian, Nicki Minaj, and Jennifer Lopez? 

Great butts! Right?

Butts that are worth millions of advertising dollars to the women who sport them. From brand sponsorship, sports car ads, clothing-line endorsements, and everything salable in between, it's no wonder why J. Lo insured her mega-money-making bootie for supposedly $27 million dollars. BUT those BUTTS belong to celebrities and what matters to you, frankly, is YOU. So, let's you and I discuss YOUR derrière. 

What kind of butt are you looking for? Do you want to look great in a pair of ripped jeans?  Is your desire to break hearts at the pool or while walking down the beach with a butt worth killing for? Or would you be satisfied with a butt that just didn't sag down onto the backs of your legs?

When you're young, regardless of whether you're male or female, it doesn't take much to have a fantastic looking backside as long as you aren't too heavy. A good butt in your youth just kind of happens without very much effort from its owner. You wake up in the morning and BAM your bootie looks awesome. But as you get a little bit older, around 27-30, or if you gain too much weight, 10+ pounds or put on the Freshman 15, above what's ideal for your height and gender, your butt can become your least liked body part right next to your apparently large feet or misshapen toes.

The difference between a butt worth COVETING or worth COVERING is the amount of fat and muscle your bootie possesses. More muscle means a rounder, fuller filled-out pair of jeans or bikini bottom. A butt that contains a lesser degree of lean muscle mass is a bootie that has too much skin that will sag onto the backs of ones hamstrings. A butt that's well-padded with fatty deposits or subcutaneous adipose can look voluminous, voluptuous, and worth squeezing as long as that fatty tissue is attached to a descent amount of gluteus muscle. However, a backside that's stuffed with unflattering fat or lumpy deposits can show cellulite dipples and dents when NOT concealed in a pair of Spanks or spandex-containing workout pants.

I hope I have convinced you that the difference between having the butt of your dreams or the bootie of your nightmares is MUSCLE. On your next trip to the gym or during tomorrow's outdoor run, why not interrupt your normal exercise routine or pattern and workout your glutes? With regular, repeated gluteal training, four weeks from now you'll be taking selfies of your beautiful butt more than you do now of your pretty face.

Thank you for your continued support. I appreciate you taking the time to read my blog on a daily or weekly basis. You give me reason to speak which is priceless.

Bell Gia
Nutrition and Fitness Expert